SPACE 2069

SINCE APOLLO 11, WE’VE LANDED ROBOTS ON MARS, BUILT A BASE IN ORBIT AROUND THE EARTH, AND SENT PROBES BEYOND OUR SOLAR SYSTEM. HERE, SCI-FI AUTHOR STEPHEN BAXTER SPECULATES ABOUT WHAT MIGHT BE ACHIEVED IN THE NEXT FIVE DECADES, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY SCI-F

What will be the next giant leaps for humankind? Science fiction author Stephen Baxter envisages the next 50 years of space exploration.

The previous decade is when it begins. In March 2019, US Vice President Mike Pence publicly challenges NASA to mount a crewed return to the Moon before the end of 2024. This would be the last year of a second term for President Trump, and so an echo of President Kennedy’s call for a Moon landing before the end of the 1960s, which led to the Apollo programme. The NASA of the 2020s is not the young and nimble organisation of 1960. However, the challenge is accepted.

In fact, NASA, with its overseas partners, has already begun the development of a new lunar architecture. This depends on a heavy-lift launcher called the Space Launch System, which is a rival to the Saturn V; an Apollo-like spacecraft being developed with the Europeans; and the Lunar Gateway, a space station in lunar orbit, from which astronauts could descend to the surface. All that is missing is a lander, a new Lunar Module. But the private company

Blue Origin steps up to the plate, with a design it has been developing since 2016.

And so the first lunar mission since Apollo launches in late 2024.

By now, however, the decade of the Moon is in full swing, with previous visits from automated landers and rovers launched by a variety of countries, including the Europeans, Japan, India, and – most ambitiously – China, which attempts sample-return flights. Still, it is believed that the majority of humankind watch or listen on 13 November 2024 – just inside Pence’s deadline – as NASA astronauts Jeff Krauss and Kaui Pukui begin their cautious descent towards the Mare Imbrium, the first lunar crew since Apollo 17…

In the year 2029, 60 years after Apollo 11, a Chinese crew lands on the surface, respectfully close to the site of the 2024 US landing attempt. The ‘Pence mission’ had always been premature. Krauss and Pukui were not the first to land on the Moon, but, six years after their disastrous descent, they are the first to be buried there.